Unlike the creatures of pure evil in Hooper's original, these bloodsuckers try to keep a low profile by feeding on cows, only occasionally taking human victims, and are keen to strike a bargain with Joe: they will spare his son if he writes a 'vampire bible' chronicling their kind. The pair travel to Salem's Lot, where Joe has inherited a ramshackle property, but discover that the town is inhabited by vampires, led by Judge Axel (Andrew Duggan). Joe is called back to civilisation to help deal with his wayward son, as if he would be of any use to the boy. Moriarty plays anthropologist Joe Weber, a man so devoid of morals that, in the film's opening scene, he is happy to film the ritualistic murder of a native without trying to intervene. With these two on screen for the majority of the film, I found this 'sequel in name only' extremely irritating my annoyance was compounded by a terrible script and the general tone of the film, which does away with the spine-chilling terror of Tobe Hooper's excellent mini-series of '79, and replaces it with scare-free drama and misplaced humour.
In Larry Cohen's A Return to Salem's Lot, star Michael Moriarty plays the same kind of insufferable wise-cracking jerk as he did in Cohen's Q: The Winged Serpent not only is the film's 'hero' thoroughly unlikeable, but so is his foul-mouthed rebellious teenage son Jeremy, played by Ricky Addison Reed. Reviewed by BA_Harrison 3 / 10 Unlikely to cause nightmares like the original.
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